Web site operators have come to realize that creating partnerships with other, complementary Web sites can help to increase marketing reach, create brand recognition and build sales. These partnerships enable a service site, having products or services to sell and wishing to reach larger numbers of potential customers, to establish a “presence” on other, host sites.
The most common partnership model at present is based on placing a banner or other descriptor on the host site, with a hyperlink to the service site. This model is simple and easily scalable to include large numbers of affiliated host sites. It typically generates only a low rate of response, however, and gives the service provider no real presence on the host site. On the other side, it does not give the host any way of participating in or monitoring the activities of the service site. In fact, as soon as a user clicks on the link to the service site, that user is carried away from the host site, and may not return.
Other models have been developed attempting to provide closer integration between the service and host sites. For example, some Web development tools allow the host site to define a window, or frame, on a host Web page. A Web page from the service site can then be displayed in the frame, in this case without carrying the user away from the host site. Framing the service site's Web page in this manner, however, uses up substantial “real estate” on the host Web page and creates an inconsistent look. Users generally find these frames unappealing and difficult to navigate in. The frame remains a separate entity, in effect a browser within and browser, disconnected from the context of the host Web site. Aspects of frames and their disadvantages are described by Nielsen in an article entitled “Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time)”, available at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html; which is incorporated herein by reference.
As an alternative to framing, some large service sites offer their own Web page templates, and attempt to induce host sites to build their Web pages into the templates. See, for example, the “barnesandnoble.com Magazine Store” operated by eNews.com, at http://barnesandnoble.enews.com. This type of template-based “co-branding” requires a dedicated development effort for each host site, making the template approach difficult to scale and to maintain. At best, the template provides a “page within a page,” with no real integration of the functionalities of the host and service sites. Functional collaboration between the host and service sites can only be achieved by back-end integration, wherein the two sites jointly develop a shared application. The infrastructure needed for collaborations of this last sort, however, can be created only one by one, with high development costs, long time-to-market and complex maintenance requirements.